The Story of Us
by Caitlyn Rose
Summary: "In this month's issue of Rolling Stone, we bring you an exclusive interview with country superstars Rayna Jaymes and Deacon Claybourne. All the details of their emotional year are revealed for the first time as we sit down with the notoriously private couple, and those who know them best." Multi-chapter story, will be influenced by S4 spoilers.
1. Chapter 1

**"** **Not a lot of people know this, but before Deacon's sister decided to donate, we were on a list just like everybody else, and we had a …false alarm, I guess you'd call it. Deacon got all the way to the operating table before it fell through with the donor liver. And so we had to leave that hospital with our daughter and just…start waiting again. We were all like zombies on the car ride home. And I remember getting right into bed and just lying there thinking, my god; how did we ever,** ** _ever_** **think we had problems before this?"**

 **\- RAYNA JAYMES, INTERVIEW WITH ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, JUNE 2016**

* * *

"You ok?" she whispers eventually. He's lying on his back with his eyes closed, but she knows he's about as near to sleep as she is.

"Yeah," he replies quietly, brave as ever. "You?"

"Yeah."

Her rolls over to face her. "Really?"

And she would have been fine – she really thinks she would have held it together – if he hadn't looked at her, hadn't showed just that extra little bit of concern.

"No," she admits immediately, before she can help it, her whole face crumpling, the tears springing to her eyes unbidden.

The look on his face, the heartbreak when he sees her cry, just makes it worse.

He pulls her into him fiercely and she shudders against his chest, silent sobs wracking her whole body.

"I'm sorry," she says eventually, trying to sniff back the tears.

"Hey." His voice is so gentle. "What do you say to me?"

Rayna manages a watery smile, rolling her eyes a little as she peeks up at him. "No apologies," she quotes back, pressing a kiss against his lips.

He just holds her, then, his arms solid and protective around her, the predictable _in out_ of his breathing a comfort and an agony at once. She doesn't have to explain how she's feeling, and he doesn't tell her not to feel that way. And Rayna knows enough about relationships at this point to know that it's rare, to have someone who gets it – gets _her_ – like that.

Is it any wonder she just wants to _keep him_? Is that really so much to ask? She'd give up anything – every cent and every platinum record – just to have this one thing. If only it worked that way.

"Do we need to talk about what happens… if you don't get a transplant?" she whispers, a few minutes later.

"I don't want to," she adds shakily. "I don't even want to _think_ about it. But do we need to?"

"Reckon we probably do," Deacon replies slowly, stoically. "But not yet, ok? Cause right now, I'm alright."

He tilts her face up to look at him. "Being here with you, gettin' to start making our family, that's pretty much the happiest I've ever been in my life," he says with a shy sort of smile. "And physically, I'm fine, you know? I'm not in any pain. The only thing botherin' me right now is a sinus infection, apparently."

She laughs a little, nudging her foot into his shin.

"This has been a hell of day," he acknowledges. "But the truth is, if you think about it, we're no worse off than we were yesterday."

Rayna seems to consider this for a second, worrying the inside of her lip. "I guess so," she admits. It's still pretty hard to feel happy about that fact.

Deacon brushes the hair back from her face. "You know I love you, right?" he says softly.

She smiles, leaning forward to kiss his cheek, his mouth, wherever she can reach. "I do know. And you're right. All those conversations… we don't need to be having them yet."

She snuggles against him with a quiet sigh, closing her eyes. He's here right now. And tomorrow is another day.


	2. Chapter 2

**"** **It was me and my mom and Maddie, and Scarlet was there too. I knew her before that, obviously, but that was, like, the first time where it kinda felt like we were all a family. I remember we tried to watch a movie, and play cards, and all kinds of stuff like that, but my mom… I don't know. I had never seen her that way. Not when my paw-paw died, or when she and my dad were getting divorced. Not ever."**

 **\- DAPHNE CONRAD, INTERVIEW WITH ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, JUNE 2016**

* * *

It's strange, Rayna thinks, how slowly time passes in a hospital waiting room.

It's strange how you feel at once _in_ your body - alert and adrenalized to what seems an almost manic extent - and out of it, as though perhaps you are not really there at all but rather, floating somewhere above, watching this nightmare play out from a safe distance.

It's strange to realize that for other people, there are dinner dates right now, and traffic jams and open mic nights - that there is _life_ , in short, continuing outside of this hospital waiting room.

It's strange the things you remember.

Rayna had never especially thought she'd be that sort of girl, but as it turned out, she'd wanted to be Deacon Claybourne's wife almost right from the beginning. She remembers that very clearly.

One kiss - a long time in the making, both of them sober enough to be nervous and just about drunk enough to plead it later if necessary - turned out to be all it took to bridge the gap between friendship and family.

They didn't 'see each other' after that. Rayna didn't know if she'd even really call it dating. There was no keeping it casual or seeing how things went. There was only a side of the bed that became hers, a side that became his, and an immediate, unspoken commitment to the obvious course of action.

When Deacon eventually did propose, she didn't even really think twice. Possibly that was stupid, given everything that had happened by then, but it was the truth. She wanted to be his wife. Still.

Of course, when it all went to shit, she was grateful on some level that the two of them never actually made it down the aisle. By that point, Deacon was about as capable of dismantling the thing as he'd been of keeping it together, which was to say, not at all - so the task fell to her.

She was the one who told people that, yes, it really truly was over this time. She was the one who transferred all the bills into his name, and drove up to the lake to collect her things, and had her mail redirected to a rental apartment.

The whole process - of making two lives from one - was the most unbearably sad thing she had ever experienced. But even so, if there was anything that could have made it worse, she supposed that might have been lawyers' fees and - it soon occurred to her - a custody battle.

It had all worked out better from a PR perspective too, Bucky informed her, in what Rayna assumed was intended as a comforting gesture. A divorce was a front page scoop, he said. As a story, it had legs. From announcement to decree absolute could take upwards of a year - plenty of time for the press to scavenge for all the details on who did what, and who got what, and why.

A break-up, on the other hand, was just a break-up. Happened every day. A statement, a few paragraphs in the rags for the fortnight or so following it, and then…nothing. Just a footnote, if even that - a forgotten fact in the annals of celebrity trivia.

But then, as time went on, didn't Rayna have to confess that was kind of a problem for her, too?

Keeping up with her own press had long since been made obvious to her as a fool's game, but she wasn't a robot. She did read the occasional article.

 _"…_ _longtime collaborator and onetime flame Deacon Claybourne…"_

 _"…_ _not every girl can stay friends with a former beau, but it's no trouble for Rayna…"_

 _"_ _Jaymes, who previously dated troubled guitarist Deacon Claybourne, is now…"_

And, yes. She wouldn't have admitted it aloud, but _yes_. Sometimes it grated a little, to see just how easily a decade of her life could be dismissed, because there had been no ring. " _It was a little bit more than dating,_ " she'd on occasion been known to say primly, wildly inappropriately, to reporters who hadn't even really asked.

For some reason, Rayna finds herself thinking of those articles now as she sits in the hospital waiting room, waiting for news, and looking to all intents and purposes like a woman who's playing cards with her family.

She and Deacon should have gotten married earlier today - that much is so completely clear to her now. They should have found a chaplain, exactly as he said, and just done it, harsh florescent lights and bleeping machines be damned. He was right - again and about everything; he was right, and she'd ignored him.

 _Boyfriend_ isn't enough, she thinks desperately, and it's only because the kids are there that she manages not to break down entirely over the sudden, simple _not fairness_ , the _not right-ness_ , of it. _Girlfriend_ isn't enough either. Those words are just too flimsy to bear the weight of him and her.

He needs to wake up, she thinks, staring into the distance single-mindedly. He needs to wake up, if only so they can correct this one wrong.

She wants to be his wife.


	3. Chapter 3

**"I don't think I've ever been so relieved and so devastated at one time. I didn't even see my Uncle Deacon for probably the first twenty four hours after the surgery, and that was real hard. But I couldn't split myself in two, you know? Didn't matter how much I** ** _felt_** **split in two. And the thing was, Deacon, he had Rayna right there obviously, and the girls, and about a thousand friends in Nashville. It was like, he had so** ** _many_** **people. But mama only had me."**

 **\- SCARLET O'CONNOR, INTERVIEW WITH ROLLING STONE MAGAINE, JUNE 2016**

* * *

Deacon is out of surgery, and Beverley is in a coma.

There's more to it than that, of course. The doctors talk and talk, confounding Rayna with words she doesn't understand, numbing her with details she can't absorb. The gist of it, though, is clear enough to her:

Deacon is alive - _Deacon is alive_ \- and Beverley might die.

That's it.

There is, so far as she can see, nothing else.

By the time the nurse comes, telling her that Deacon's waking up, Scarlet's off with her mother, and Maddie and Daphne are asleep, curled around each other on those hospital chairs in a way that looks both incredibly sweet and incredibly uncomfortable.

Rayna is grateful to have this time, just this first little while, alone with him. Because she knows instinctively that she has to be the one to tell him. She just has to be.

She finds herself hovering outside his door, psyching herself up for it, when there comes a hand on her arm. Deacon will be very groggy, his nurse says. Very weak. He'll need the next twenty-four hours to fully recover from the anesthesia. Now is probably not the best time for any _serious conversations_.

Rayna nods, suddenly feeling a little faint. She gets the message loud and clear, and sees it for what it is. A reprieve.

With one more slow, deep breath, she eases the door open. Deacon is lying there, a tube in his nose and one in his mouth, and now she really does think her legs will buckle under her. She never knew relief could feel like this – so tangible and overwhelming, somehow so much more like pain than pleasure.

She sinks down gratefully into the chair beside his bed, grabbing his hand greedily, taking it between both of hers and pulling it to her lips. His eyes are half closed, but Rayna doesn't care. That means they're half open. It means he's alive.

"Hi," she says, smiling weakly, and it's only when she speaks that she realizes that her voice is hoarse and she's crying, tears streaming down her face unnoticed.

She's not sure how long she sits there after that, just smiling and crying and stroking his hand, with only the beeping of the hospital machines between them. It could be a minute or it could be thirty. He looks at her the whole time, though, straight in the eye, and she knows that he's aware of what's around him. He's right there with her.

"Do you remember the first time we ever kissed?" she finds herself asking at some point, the words out of her mouth before she has a chance to wonder where they came from. It's a silly question, really – both because she knows he can't answer and because she knows what his answer would be.

"My heart was beating so fast, I was sure you were going to feel it," she mumbles, managing a little laugh.

He tries to smile along with her and she raises his hand, laying it flat against her chest, her heart pounding under his palm.

"I love you so much," she whispers urgently then, the words coming out strangled with emotion, and he turns his hand to clutch at her fingers, gripping tightly.

For now, that's enough. It's more than enough.


	4. Chapter 4

**"I can't comment on individual patients, you'll understand. What I will say is that the physical and psychological exhaustion that comes with having a loved one in a coma is hard to overstate. Relatives tell me all the time it feels like someone has pressed a pause button on the rest of the world."**

 **\- DR. CALEB RAND, INTERVIEW WITH ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, JUNE 2016**

* * *

"Hey," Rayna says lightly, because there doesn't seem to be any other way to say things in this hospital. Everything, even the most horrendous of news, is delivered with a brittle sort of benevolence.

"Any change?" she asks, though of course, she knows the answer - he'd have called her if there was anything to report.

As expected, Deacon shakes his head.

It's been weeks.

Weeks of no change, weeks of Beverley lying comatose in this hospital room, Deacon opposite her in a tiny cot bed.

They sit there for a moment, and Rayna takes his hand in hers hers, her thumb stroking his skin unconsciously.

"Babe, I think it's time for you to come home," she says then, in that quiet, decisive way of hers.

Deacon looks at her, sad eyes widening ever so slightly.

It's a gentle protest, she knows - the only kind he's capable of right now - but she just nods in response, pushing back just as gently.

"I know it's killing you, to see her like this. But it's killing _me_ to see _you_ like this."

Deacon makes some attempt to rally. "I'm okay," he says, as brightly as he can manage.

Rayna smiles sadly, lifting a hand up to his face. "You're not okay," she replies quietly. "And if things were different, I'd come up here and just camp out right along with you. You know I would. The girls need someone, though, and -"

A fresh shadow of concern seems to cross his face at the mention of Maddie and Daphne.

"- How they doin'?" he interjects, keen for news.

"They're ...alright," she says simply, because that's another conversation entirely. "But you need to come home and just let me take care of you, okay?"

Her voice breaks a little. "I don't want to go to bed without you anymore."

Deacon's face seems to crumple then. "I know, I know, I'm sorry baby," he says, pure anguish in his expression. "I…the last thing I wanna do right now is jeopardize what we have, but it's just Bev-"

"- Woah woah woah," Rayna interrupts, her palm held up to him. "You're not gonna jeopardize what we have," she says, sounding a little dumbfounded by the mere prospect. "That's not even…"

She sighs, unsure how to express herself.

"Babe. Listen to me. There is nothing you could say, or do – there's no amount of time you could stay in this hospital – that would make me leave you. And I'll be damned if I'm letting you leave me."

Her voice is thick with emotion, but she nudges her shoulder against him playfully, an attempt to make him smile. It works, kind of.

"You and me, we're okay," she continues softly. "We're always gonna be okay. I'm just worried about you, is all. I love you, and I miss you, and I don't like thinking about you sleeping in here by yourself."

It's as honest as Rayna knows how to be, and whether it's what she says or the way she says it…somehow it seems to reach him.

That night, Deacon is back in their bed.

Ten days later, they're putting his sister in the ground.


	5. Chapter 5

**"It was a hard time. My Dad was kind of looking for someone to blame, I guess. And sometimes that was the doctors, or sometimes it was my cousin Scarlet, 'cause she was the one who had to decide when to switch off the machines. Mostly it seemed like it was himself - that's just the kind of guy he is. There were definitely some days where things were just… bad. But music helped, I think. Music and my mom."**

 **\- MADDIE CONRAD CLAYBOURNE, INTERVIEW WITH ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, JUNE 2016**

* * *

He brings a draft of cold November air in with him as he shrugs off his coat and settles on the couch. She's curled up, her feet twisted under her, and his hand ghosts instinctively over her knee, urging her in towards him somehow.

"You tryin' to freeze me?" she murmurs, but makes no move to pull away. After an hour spent trying to stop herself grabbing the keys and speeding across town, an hour spent telling herself he'd be home when he was ready to be here, she's honestly just relieved to see him.

He looks tired, she thinks.

"Where're the girls?" he asks.

"Daphne's upstairs. Maddie's out with Colt."

"…She called me a little while ago," Rayna adds, a little tentatively. "Said she stopped by your house with some food."

Deacon seems to freeze, his eyes unblinking as he assimilates this information, the pieces fitting together like a jigsaw. It doesn't take long for him to get the picture.

Him ransacking the bedroom in his old house, the one intended to be Beverley's after the surgery. Him sitting in the wreckage afterwards. Rage, confusion, tears… some or maybe all of the above, that's what his daughter must have come upon; none of it good.

"She's alright," Rayna says, as if reading his thoughts.

"C'mere," she puts her hand on his cheek and leans in to kiss him. "She really is ok; just worried about you."

They look at each other for a beat, something quiet and tender passing between them.

"We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Rayna says, her fingers tracing idly along his jaw. He makes no reply, just falls into her, lips brushing against her neck, hands pressed into the well-worn plaid of her shirt.

And he thinks once again that he is so, _so_ grateful for her- for _this_ , the part that's more than friends, more than what the kids or Scarlet or anyone else in the world could ever give him. The taste of her mouth on his, the weight of her limbs wrapped around him at night… it's a kind of comfort that is intimate and tangible. Sometimes, it has felt like all that's rooting him to the earth.

"I don't know, Ray," he murmurs, his expression agonized. "I don't know if I can ever get rid of it. The guilt. I… I don't even know what happened tonight. I just needed…" he trails off defeatedly. "I don't know what I needed."

She just nods. The urge to physically lash out, whilst it's always come more quickly to him than her, isn't one she finds entirely foreign. And though she would strongly have preferred Maddie not to witness any part of it, frankly, if a few battered lamp shades is what it takes to help Deacon through this, that seems like a small price to pay.

"I feel guilty too," she adds then quietly.

Of all the responses Deacon might have expected, that wasn't among them.

"What? Why?"

Rayna shrugs.

"I went to her house and offered her a million dollars to do something, and it killed her," she says simply, tugging absently at the cuffs of her shirt, eyes darting downwards. "I mean, I know we had no control over that, and I know she didn't even take the money, but still. I feel guilty. And I feel like a hypocrite."

"A hypocrite?" Deacon frowns. "What do you mean?"

"Uhmm…" Rayna hesitates, trying to work out even in her own mind how to explain it. "I don't know. I guess I think about Scarlet, losing her mother. And you, and how hard this is for you. And I think about _Beverley_ , you know? The kind of life she had, the kind of life she wanted to have – the one I got."

"It's just…" Rayna suddenly finds her throat catching. "It's _awful_ , you know? The whole thing. But then I'm like," – she cocks an eyebrow cynically - "well, hang on; Beverley and I didn't even really like each other all that much. You know? What right do _I_ have, to mourn her now that she's gone? Especially when I have _you_ ," she says, smiling sadly. "You're here, and that's just like…everything I prayed for. And I know I didn't get to pick, but if I'd had to…"

She doesn't bother filling in the blank, doesn't say that of course, she would have picked him. That of all the lives in the world save her children's, his is the one that matters most to her.

He takes her hands in his, weaving their fingers together. "Baby…" he murmurs, probably more by force of habit than anything else. He doesn't have much else to give her.

It feels like every thought she's expressed has been running through his own head on a permanent loop for weeks.

More than anything, Deacon wishes that he didn't remember the truth. He wishes he could forget that Bev wasn't always a great mother, or a great person; that a lot of the time, in fact, she wasn't. To be able to just remember her fondly as his beloved, martyred sister, that would make this whole thing so much easier. Or maybe it wouldn't. He really doesn't know anymore.

He exhales heavily, helplessly, bringing her hands up to his lips, watching her face relax a little as he nuzzles at her knuckles.

"I'm glad you told me all that," he says simply, because he finds that it's true.

He feels shitty, and apparently she does too, and the hand that life has dealt them here is profoundly, undeniably shitty. Nothing either one of them can say could make it otherwise. But then, somehow, Deacon does feel a tiny, tiny bit better, just knowing that all the mixed up guilt and gratitude and anger and sorrow isn't his alone to bear.

"Hey. You know what I think we should do," she offers, a few minutes later.

He raises his eyebrows, curiosity piqued.

"I think we should write a song."

Deacon is hesitant. "…I don't know if I have anything good in me right now, baby," he says apologetically.

"Me neither. It'll probably be a terrible song," she deadpans. "We don't have to put it on our record. Let's just... I don't know. Play around a little bit."

It jolts something in him, the recollection of that album they'd talked about making all those months ago. He can't really say he has the heart for it anymore. He doubts he ever will, honestly. In what universe, he wonders, could he just resume his old plans like nothing had happened? What kind of person would that make him? He's not sure what the rules are, when your sister is not only dead but also dead essentially because of you. Somehow, though, he instinctively knows that in his particular case, recording music again isn't on the cards. It would just seem too...self-indulgent, somehow.

Still, Rayna's looking at him expectantly, and he loves her more than anything, and there doesn't seem any good reason to disappoint her. Not right now, at least.

So he reaches for his guitar, starts to strum it a little as she scrambles around for her notebook. Maybe there's not much wrong in still playing for her, he tells himself. When it's just the two of them, at home like this; maybe he could still manage that.

His fingers, as it turns out, do most of the work for him, pulling him out of his own head, knowing instinctively how to follow Rayna's voice in places and guide it in others. With a delicate little folk melody and a mish mash of lyrics that - as they'd both predicted - might well be terrible, it doesn't take them long to get something going. They have, after all, being doing this together for more than half their lives now.

And it doesn't feel all the way good - doesn't take the pain away, maybe even sharpens it in some sense. But it doesn't feel all the way bad either. And that in itself is kind of a surprise. There's a normality to it - doing this particular thing with this particular person - that turns out to feel kind of nice.

When Maddie creeps in an hour later, she finds her parents like that, heads bent together in the semi-darkness, debating the merits of something or other quietly.

Her eyes are red rimmed and she's sure not stupid enough to think that everything is fine now.

But for the first time in a long time, she feels like it might be. Eventually.


	6. Chapter 6

**"I've seen Rayna and Deacon when they were friends, when they were a couple, when they were kind of on the outs...just, every which way. I think people would be surprised by how little difference there was a lot of the time. Whenever something really good or really bad would happen - parents passing away, career highs, career lows, whatever...it was like the two of them would just spring back together. Like magnets. And so, to answer your question, I don't really know how they got though this past year. I guess that's between them. But it doesn't surprise me at all that they did it together."**

 **\- BUCKY DAWES, INTERVIEW WITH ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, JUNE 2016**

* * *

"Hello?" Deacon says cautiously, quietly. He'd seen the sliver of light from under the bedroom door, but he's still afraid she might be asleep.

He needn't have worried. Sitting on top of the comforter, propped up against a mountain of pillows and apparently doing nothing in particular, her weary eyes seem to brighten at the sound of his voice.

"Hi," she says, pleased and surprised and tired all in one word, clambering across the bed to him. She sits up on her knees to try and reach his height, arms outstretched, and he leans down gratefully, holding her close.

He strokes her hair and feels the heat of her body, and it takes him a minute to realize that something's not right. She's weeping silently against him.

"Hey," he says softly. "Hey hey hey. What's the matter?"

She peers up at him, both arms clasped tightly around him. "Nothing, I just… I don't know." She attempts a smile. "I guess I'm just glad you're home."

He's unconvinced, voice still tender and and concerned. "Did something happen?"

"No. I mean not really. I guess it's just everything with the kids, and then this new guy Markus at the label - i don't know if we ever should have signed him to be honest - and…ugh," she stops, shudders, as if somehow trying to rid her mind of all these thoughts.

"...You know what, it doesn't even matter right now," she says, deftly deflecting the attention away from herself. "How're you doing babe? Tell me about your trip."

Decon hesitates for a second, still unhappy to see her unhappy. But, then, if this what she wants right now, he can go with it.

"It was good," he answers. "Kinda. I mean it was… helpful, I guess. You were right," he admits, and they share a small smile.

Because she had been the one to tell him that he should to go to back to Natchez with Scarlet, that he needed to do some of the stuff people did when they were trying to make sense of their grief. People did all those things for a reason, she'd said. The process of sorting through Beverley's belongings - even just the being there, in that town, with those memories - would definitely be hard, but it might also be healing.

Of course, it has been three days of Rayna wondering what the hell she thought she knew about anything. Three days of praying she hasn't sent the man she loves off to a place he hates, with nothing but her nonsense psychobabble for company.

Looking at him now, she can see that he's tired still; they've both been so tired for what feels like so long. And he's left it an extra day without shaving. But there's something about his expression that seems more open, Rayna thinks, his eyes clearer than she's seen them in a while.

And somehow she knows - without really even consciously knowing _why_ she knows - that it has indeed been a good thing, for him to make the trip.

"I missed you," he says then, leaning in to kiss her, and she brings her hands up to his neck. His tongue dips into her mouth, and she raises her eyebrows wordlessly, eyes still closed. It's familiar, that heat and this taste and the clench in her stomach, but it's somehow different at the same time, too. There's some sense of _fun_ that hasn't been there for a while.

She takes her lead from him, tilting her head back, the point of her chin still against his as she nips playfully at his bottom lip. And when he pushes her backwards on the bed, she lets herself topple, pulling him down along with her, laughing all the while. This sense of lightness feels like such a novelty. It feels good.

Together they shuffle their way up the bed until they're lying against the pillows, Deacon kicking off his shoes along the way.

She curls into his side, smiling, her palm sweeping across his chest unconsciously. She does that now, Deacon notices - as if she's just reminding herself that he's still there.

"How 'bout you tell me about what's going on with the girls," he suggests then. "And this dude at the label. Just…start from the beginning. Huh? Tell me everything."

Rayna looks up at him. All of a sudden, that feels like exactly what she's needed to hear.


End file.
